Note, too, the extraordinary rows of mythical beasts which lie upon the arms of the lower row of stalls; catch them in perspective one evening in the dusk--they will give you food for most fantastic dreaming. What minds, half childlike and half mad, these early carvers had! The doors of the choir are the work of Fra Damiano of Bergamo. They are intarsia work, and show a most delightful fancy. They have unfortunately been much polished and restored; still what a jewel this panel is, which is said to represent the finding of Moses! Compare the banks of the Nile with this palace and this pleasaunce of the purest Renaissance. Its bulrushes are turned to pergolas, its pyramids to a maze of pillars and of marble terraces, and there is a bear in the foreground eating honey, a crane, a rabbit, a long-eared goat, and other beasts of singular delight. It is strange to think of Fra Damiano sitting in his rooms at Bologna and preparing these same decorative panels for a place which, maybe, he had never seen. Above the doors is a fresco attributed to Giannicola Manni(?), and when the doors open you step out straight upon a little balcony, and down below lies the Umbrian plain, without a break of building, and straight in front of you Assisi lies upon its broad, calm hillside. The work for the stalls of S. Pietro was finished, it seems, in 1535, but the pieces were not put together till 1591. In that year, on the 4th of August, a native architect undertook to put the carvings in their places. He worked so steadily that on Christmas Eve of that same year, "at the first vespers of the feast, the choir was solemnly inaugurated in a musical mass sung by the friars." What a picture we have--the dull light of the candles on the winter morning and the monks singing together, in the midst of all their beautiful new woodwork!